Man The Lifeboats!

The greatest number of artists gathered in one place; all four of our stages in full swing; weird and wonderful entertainers wandering around the festival village. So, we need a very special band to round off the evening and send our festival goers home happy, smiling and dancing.

After a storming first performance at Deepdale on the Sunday of last year’s Festival, the full band are here this year to blow your folky socks off! Emerging from the London folk/punk scene in 2016, with the energy, social conscience and driving folk rock of the Levellers and Oysterband in their pomp, and influences stretching from Springsteen, through Dylan and around Tom Waits, they’ve been described as ‘a stripped back Bellowhead for cynical city dwellers’ (Alt Revue). With their drink-soaked tales of London life around the less salubrious end of town, we think their Pogue-ish influence shines through.

The band themselves describe their genesis: ‘underneath the arches of the Garage, Islington, two amazing bands blow the audience away. Holy Moly & The Crackers’ cool blend of gorgeous gypsy folk and garage rock sets the scene, before Skinny Lister blow the roof off with their frenetic, upbeat folk, their manic energy, singalong song-writing genius and heart-on-the-sleeve soulfulness. In the audience, two men sip heartily from the flagon, howl along and punch the air in jubilation. This is what it’s all about.

On that bruising night, that cold walk home, the twinkle in the eye and the fire in the soul well and truly ignited, the very next morning Man The Lifeboats were born, their objective to play the same, raucous, upbeat folk music, to drag traditional folk tunes kicking and screaming into the 21st century, to craft songs with big choruses that tell stories. Songs with straight-up lyrics, pounding bass lines, lilting mandolin and fiddle melodies and stomping beats, Man The Lifeboats have cultivated a sound that would not be out of place at a party at the end of the world.’

Throw all that in a cauldron, add guitars,
mandolin, accordion, and fiddle, stir with drums and bass, and you end up with
a blistering live experience, tales of lost evenings, ballads of doomed love
and shanties about whisky-soaked nights, Michael Palin, and the end of the
world.